


How it Was

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Brothers, Canonical Character Death, Corpses, Crying, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 12:57:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3174338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dennis knows what his brother would be doing - had he survived, that is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How it Was

_No, Dennis, you have to stay with mum and dad! You're too young!"_

_Brown eyes sullen, Dennis had not felt wrong in spitting at his brother, "I hate you!"_

_"No you don't," Collin countered with a wry smirk before stepping out their family's rental home and apparating to Hogwarts._

His brother's camera dangling from around his neck, the fourteen year old stumbled over Hogwart's gouged and scorched grounds. He could hear people  _crying_. Dennis was  _crying_. "Collin! Collin!" He shouted.

People were moving around now, some talking to each other and others, like him, were calling the names of those they cared about. He'd seen a few people find their missing friends or family that way; just a couple minutes earlier he'd seen a squat woman scream and run into the arms of a well-toned boy probably Collins age or so. Why wasn't Collin running to him? Where was his brother?

"Collin!" He howled, voice cracking at the end.

A girl probably no older than him approached. She wore the colors of Hufflepuff and her eyes were solemn. "You should go inside," she said.

"Why?" Dennis demanded.

Hair a tangled mane around her face, she only reiterated herself, "Try inside."

Jittery, the fourteen year old stared at the girl some more before demanding, "What's your name?"

"Tilly, Tilly Toots."

Nodding at this, Dennis took off for the castle. Going inside, several more very sad faces pointed him in the direction Great Hall. Heady with dread, Dennis started running for the Hall. Getting in, he saw lots of people moving around; but what mattered the most was what he  _heard._ People weren't just shouting like they were outside or crying, people in here, they were  _shrieking_ and they were  _bawling_. Trying to pinpoint one of the squalling souls, he spied a couple Gryffindor girls whimpering over somebody. Approaching, he looked down and gasped at the mangled girl he saw laid on the cot between them.

He almost recognized. She was once pretty, he could tell, before she got that giant hole in her face and that tear in her neck that had bloodied her clothes so badly. Looking up at Dennis, one of the grieving girl's eyes dilated and they seemed to recognized Dennis right away.

"You're-"

"Where's Colin?" He demanded cutting off the other.

Her eyes wavered and then fell to the cot wayside of the one holding the once pretty, now dead girl.

Knees quaking, he whispered, "No."

Dark eyes soft, the other girl reached over and placed a dusky hand upon his elbow - despite her own pains as she grieved for her friend.

Shaking her off, Dennis stumbled over to the cot and  _roared_ when he saw his brother's colorless, still face. Dropping to his knees, Dennis grabbed Colin's hand and demanded, "Get  _up_."

His brother didn't, instead, he lay utterly still. He was too rigid, too lifeless. Colin he wasn't - he never - This just  _could't_ be his brother! Not the boy he could recall right from his earliest days who'd always been  _moving_ and  _talking_ and-

_"Shut up Colin! Don't you ever stop?"_

A wretched sob escaping his lips, Dennis clung to his brother's stiff hand and buried his face in the sweatshirt identical to the one he was wearing right now. Their mum had bought them each one last Christmas, she'd always thought blue was a becoming color on them and knew they both liked stripes. It'd made sense and having been dressed in identical - if only different sized clothes - their entire lives, Dennis and Colin had been very happy with their gifts.

Blubbering into his brother's stomach, Dennis wondered how he was going to tell their mum and dad. How could he go home and tell them that Colin, their exuberant,  _going to be somebody!_ son was dead?

How  _could_ he?

And how was Dennis going to live with himself knowing the last thing he'd said to Colin was that he'd hated him?

There was a lot stuff he didn't think he was going to be able to live with, but Dennis wasn't so mad that he'd increase the grief everyone was feeling by doing something stupid. As he cried there, clinging to his brother's hand just  _apologizing_ for everything, a hand touched his shoulder.

Looking up, Dennis was surprised to see that it was Harry  _Potter_ staring down at him with sad eyes.

"I'm sorry about your brother," he said to Dennis, "Colin was a good guy."

The fourteen year old didn't quite know what to do. Swallowing thickly, he bobbed his head in acceptance and gave a wavering smile. Harry echoed that smile with the briefest flicker of his own lips.

Obviously uncomfortable, but wanting to give Dennis something, the god among men told him, "You're brother did good, you know? He helped us win this war and now, you and the rest of your family's going to be safe. You're going to get to come back and finish your education like should be doing." The vaguest look of regret sparking in his highland green eyes, he pointed to Colin's camera. "Next year, you can join the yearbook club and take pictures - show everyone that Hogwarts and it's students survived."

And with one brief pat to his shoulder, Harry strode on.

Staring at the camera hanging around his neck, Dennis felt a terrible urge to do something with it. Eyes lifting away, he let his gaze roam the room. From the people just milling around to the families (like him) crying over dead loved ones.

_Somebody ought to take pictures..._

Dennis looked to his brother. That was something Colin would think, he knew better. He knew you couldn't get in people's faces and take what you want, but...maybe this time called for it? If not pictures of the people grieving themselves, at the very least someone ought to take pictures of what was going on outside and around Hogwarts. Someday, people would ask for them. They'd say, "Show me proof!" And there wouldn't be. Someday, there would be only written accounts and monuments, if no one took pictures for those non-believers.

Shaking fingers wrapping around the camera, Dennis tested it. Pointing the lens at his brother's rumpled, wet middle; the fourteen year old lifted one of Colin's hands and laid it across. Snapping a picture, he did it once more to make sure it was clear. Satisfied with pictures that came out of the camera, Dennis stuffed them in his pockets and stood up.

"What are you doing?" One of the girls from before asked.

Looking at her, he answered, "I'm taking record."

"Record?" The other, dusky-skinned one repeated with a crinkled nose.

Nodding, he explained himself further, "I was just testing the camera, but now I'm going outside to take photos of the grounds so in the future people can see what war's done. Maybe then they'll think twice about making it."

"Take a picture of us," the first girl demanded. "I don't know how Lavender's parents will feel about it, but take a picture of us. Let people see how everyone loses in the war."

Taking a breath, Dennis agreed, "Alright."

And the two girls arranged themselves so they're big, haunted eyes were gazing at the lens as they're dirty fingers were clutching at their dead friend's body. Snapping the picture, Dennis was going to move on, but a voice from behind called, "Take one of me too, let 'em know how it looks to lose a cousin!"

Other voices began to chime in, asking for the same as other's shouted him down with swears and tears.

Dennis took photos of those who wanted them and said loudly to those objecting, "I'm not taking pictures of people who don't want to be photographed!"

It settled everyone down and soon, Dennis was able to get out and about the castle and grounds where he took picture after picture of the devastation and people affected by it. Later, when he got home, he told his parents about Colin and while they cried in the kitchen about their dead son, Dennis began to organize his photos.

A year later, a book of pictures was released. Editors and critics alike raved for and against it.

Those who praised it commented on the arrangement and balance of photos; how neither pictures of Hogwarts and its ground or photos of the people involved overshadowed one another. They liked the simplicity, they liked that the pictures were black and white and that the captions only included a brief description and names of what and who were in the photos. They liked how the pictures spoke for themselves.

The ones who were against the book called it morbid. They said the book exploited the event and glorified the atrocities. They hated the rawness in the eyes of those souls who were brave enough to be photographed, they hated how beaten and broken and wrecked Hogwarts, the pride of Magical Britain, looked. And what they hated most of all was that  _somebody_ had dared to photograph what they saw when they should have been mourning and celebrating like everyone else.

Dennis wasn't sorry about what he'd done. Didn't regret it because in the end, what mattered most to him about that book was how he ended it.

The last picture, it was his brother, all of eleven and dressed in his school attire with a grin and the very camera Dennis had used slung around his neck. Beneath it, he'd written the only thing that told more than what lay within the photo:

_For Colin Creevey, a true lion and well-loved brother and son_

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, please leave a comment/kudo to let me know what you think!


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